Opinion: So this President Obama guy walks into a bar and....
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You will laugh!
President Obama has a day job for now -- although the new CNN Poll indicates a majority have already decided they don’t want to give him a contract extension come 2012.
Given the wide range of national problems he hasn’t significantly improved and promises as yet unkept, it’s perhaps understandable that the ex-state senator is not known for telling TelePromptered knee-slappers.
And when Obama does go impromptu -- as he did last year with Jay Leno with a derogatory crack about the Special Olympics -- he can be rather Bidenesque, stepping into things he has to apologize for.
But Tuesday in Maryland during another visit to another union job training site for the benefit of cameras, the congenitally straight-faced public pol seemed to make an effort to crack a couple of jokes.
All right, they weren’t really joke jokes. More like quips. Or anecdotes. But coming from the presidential podium, they did elicit some laughs from the polite audience:
Joke #1--
Thank you for the warm welcome. Thanks for showing me around. I was just mentioning that I got a chance to pull the first fire alarm since I was in junior high. (Laughter.) And I didn’t get in trouble for it.
Joke #2--
That’s what brings us here. Through the Department of Energy -– under the leadership of Nobel prize-winning physicist, Steven Chu –- although, just a quick side note: When he was talking to some of the instructors here, and they were talking about currents and this and that and the other, I indicated to him that he could have saved a lot of money. Instead of getting a Ph.D., he could have come here and learned some of the same stuff. (Laughter and applause.) You know, the instructors here were just keeping up -- they were right there with him.
He’ll be here all week, folks. All year too. In fact, he’s booked through 2012.
-- Andrew Malcolm
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